I'm fumbling for a creative and catchy way to introduce this game, and I'm just not finding it. I'll just go with this. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is the best game I've played this year.
A lot of people are looking forward to the new Final Fantasy Tactics game which is about to hit. I don't know if it was conincidence or not, but all of a sudden strategy RPGs have been reappearing. This year alone, I've played Generation of Chaos III, Sakura Taisen, and Venus & Braves. I initially intended to buy this game while I was in Japan, but it sold out of stores on its release date...one of a couple factors which made me miss my flight back home.
In any case, the question most people are probably wondering about is this, "I have heard that Disgaea's good...but is it better than Final Fantasy Tactics?"
Well, to find out...either play it, or utilize some of those reading comprehension skills they used to tell us about in school.
Here's the story...
So, you're Larharl. Your everyday average kid. Who happens to be older than 1300 years old, and is Prince of the Netherworld. After your "loyal" vassal Etna "wakes" you from a 2-year nap you get the news that your pops has kicked off...while you were sleeping. Anyway, you figure it's time for you to become Overlord. Only it isn't, because porn stars, tribal chieftains and Arnold Schwarzenegger are madly scrambling to gain popular support so they can recall you in the upcoming election. Sorry...wrong bit of government wackiness...sadly...that's not made up.
But people have been rallying the troops to lay claim to the title of Overlord they deem vacant, and after the 2 or 3 text boxes it takes you to get over your father's death, you decide that if anyone's going to succeed him, it's going to be you. Along the way, you'll meet up with Flonne, Mid-Boss, and the Defender of the Earth. I was kind of disappointed in the lack of a nice intro movie, though, since the other 3 PS2 strat-RPGs I've played this year all had really, really great ones.
Game On!
Gameplay is similar to most other turn-based strategy games you've ever played, with some tweaks.
First off, your move order isn't determined by a "speed" attribute. Your speed attribute in Disgaea is responsible for determining how difficult you are to hit. You have 10 party members that you can summon from a "Base Panel", and spread them out to determine your opening position. You don't have to send out all 10 members (in fact, towards the end of the game, you'll probably only be using 1 or 2.) but the fact that they get to plunk them down in reference to the enemy's starting positions allows this game to be a bit more tactical. However, since it's a "your turn, their turn" set up, you aren't going to get any situations where you outmatch the enemy enough to attack them twice, or haste yourself to attack quicker.
Second, your enemies will be able to team up and attack nearly anything provided they're in the proper formation. A teammate standing adjcent to you, and facing the enemy will have a very high probability of linking an attack with you. If you did this right, with 4 allies forming a T and the enemy at the tip of that T, you'll get a pretty fun looking 4-man combo.
Next tweak, Geo Panels. Geo Panels are colored squares on the board that will give various positive and negative modifiers to the squares. Some of them, like HL + 50% aren't really going to turn the tide of a battle. But, others, like Enemy Boost x 3 or Damage 100% are going to be a square you want to avoid ending the turn on. Clone, too, is one you want to avoid stopping on, lest you want to have fun trying to defeat a copy of your highest level character. If you break a Geo Stone (colored pyramid on the board.) it'll change the color of all the corresponding Geo Panels to whatever it specifies. (Break red on green, all the greens will become red...break clear on yellow, and the yellow squares lose color.) You can use these to line up big color change combos which will harm any unit unfortunate enough to be positioned on them, and build up a big Bonus for you...provided you don't happen to be unfortunate enough to be color-blind. (My sympathies, 12.) This got to be a minor annoyance in my opinion, since the game was giving out huge bonuses for what amounted to a non-combat mini-puzzle, while you were in combat.
The Bonus system rewards you with items and cash based on how well perform certain tasks in battle. Your Bonus meter will increase every time you kill an enemy. Greater Bonus meter increases will be granted if that kill was on a Counter-Attack, a team-up combo, etc. Enemies themselves don't drop their equipment, so your sole source of battle earned booty is going to be at the end of the fight when the bonus meter doles out whatever your meter points earned you.
While we're on the subject of Geo Stones, that seques nicely into some of the other aspects of Disgaea. Each of your non-monster characters is able to lift and throw other characters and Geo Stones. You can use this to do a number of things. You can pick up one character and chuck them. Or continually pick up people and chuck them all the way across the map (if you want to see this just leave the game at the start screen for a while.) If you hurl a Geo Stone into an enemy, it'll break the stone, and if the enemy is standing on a color, it'll start the color changing process. Throwing monsters into other monsters will create a monster with the combined stats and levels of the two. Finally, you can throw a monster onto your own Base Panel, and depending on the levels and number of the people inside your base, you may be able to capture it and make it a permanent member of your party.
In addition to the party members you start with, you can create other members via the Dark Assembly. When you summon the Dark Assembly, a single character must do it. When a character is created, they are created using the Mana pool that character has built up through their battle kills. You can use Mana to recruit other characters, and when they are created, they are the pupil of the recruiting character. If you have the two stand next to each other in battle, the Mentor can cast all the spells the Pupil has learned, at a 0 rank. If they cast the spells or use the skill enough to level it to level 1, they are able to gain that particular skill permanently. The game refers to this as "Extra Gain".
Counter-attacks even have a bit of an added wrinkle. You can have your Counter ability max out at 5, and what this means is that you can Counter up to that number of hits. So at a max of 5, you'll hit the enemy with your atttack 3 times, and they'll get 2. This is useful when you've got a high speed and they can't hit you...but you can pound them for days. It's always a great feeling to counter a counter.
The game's 150 classes? Those are a HUGE exaggeration. Essentially, you get something like 30 classes. I haven't unlocked them all, but here's how that all works. There are 18 distinict humanoid classes. In terms of distinct, however, gender is often the only disctintion. Not really important to me, but they unlock the corresponding female versions of the upgraded classes. Each of those classes gets 6 sub-levels (i.e. Ninja, Ninja Adept, Elite Ninja, Shadow Ninja, Master Ninja, and Shinobi...which is just 'Ninja' in Japanese.) so that accounts for 108 of the classes right there. You also have 10-15 monster types that get unlocked as you face them in battle. I never bothered levelling those things, so I couldn't tell you how many levels they get, but off-hand, I'd probably guess 3...which puts the number at around 34 actual distinct character classes...which is good...but not nearly as good as advertised. The lesson to learn, as always, is that Marketing people just want your money.
The Dark Assembly
If it were up to me, I would have just called this "Congress"...so I'll just call it Congress in my review. Anyway, anytime you want to do something big, you have to run it through Congress. Congress decides whether or not you get more expensive, higher quality goods in the shop, Congress approves your use of Genius level recruits, Congress decides if you can increase the number of Counter-Attacks you have at your disposal. Unfortunately, a lot of the Members of Congress hate you. They think you suck. In fact, some of the Members of Congress are plotting to go over to your house and kick your dog right as we speak. Don't blame me...I'm just telling you. You can find out what they're thinking about voting by taking a look at the list of Congresspeople in the menu. Lower level party members will have fewer members of Congress voting when they suggest a proposal. If someone's particularly against letting you get a bill through, you can offer that Member of Congress a Bribe! (Just like the way real government works, kiddies!)
It'll tell you how interested they are in your bribe item as you highlight it. Giving them an item they definitely want will raise their opinion of your bill. If you can't "sway" enough members of Congress...you can always just kill them all, giving new meaning to the term, "Run the Bill through Congress." I generally choose this course of action. Mainly because all the Congresspeople that vote "NAY!" all stand up on the little bench in front of them and taunt you in their victory poses. I can't let that slide. If you're just going to vote, "Nay." I can understand...but you gotta go and rub it in...so you're getting a trip...INTO SPACE! (You'll understand once you get a Brawler with the "Rising Dragon" skill.
I like this feature. It's mostly frivolous...but I enjoy the idea of beating up the government. It feels right.
Item World
Every single item you get has little people living in it. Think about that the next time you consume something. Anyway, there's a huge dungeon inside each item that you can descend into and slay all the inhabitants inside. The dungeon is randomly generated, and frequently, you can't access all parts of the level. (Unless there's some character that throws across the entire board by himself.)
Most items have "Specialists" inhabiting them. Once you "subdue" the Specialist through a vicious beating, they'll help you out, and power up the itme in the manner in which they Specialize. You can then move the Specialists to other item and combine them...into VOLTRON!!! Just kidding. But they do take up one less space, and combine their powers...for JUSTICE!
The more rare an item is (lower numbers for the "Rarity" stat are better) the higher Specialist population it can have. When you get down to the last level of an Item World, you'll encounter the Item God, at which point, you will have thoroughly pimped the item.
This is cool because it adds a whole lot of replay value to the game. You're constantly building up your items. However, that isn't to say the neverending quest to get better and better items while knowing that they can just be bettered kind of makes you feel that this is relatively pointless...especially since the Item World routinely provides you with items that are better than the one you're levelling up.
Graphics
The anime characters are a mixed bag. Laharl doesn't look quite as cool as he needs to. Etna and Flonne look as good as flat chested characters are going to look..and Flonne looks really funny when she's confused. (On purpose.) Jennifer looks like she's in the wrong pose half the time, and honestly, I have an incredibly difficult time telling the female sprites from the male sprites for nearly every character class. I thought there were two female archers until I made one of each, and the male voice set was assigned to one of them.
In battle, the backgrounds SUCK. They're either a flat color or a non-moving picture. Come on guys...they were doing that back in the days of FFT, and that was on a Playstation 1.
The effects on the attacks look nice, though, and some of those are done really well. However, most of the uber-super attacks are a relative let down.
Sounds
Sorry Atlus, but the US voice-overs suck. Points for effort, and keeping the Japanese voices in the game. Excellent, excellent call. The English voice actors seem to place the emphasis on the wrong words, and it doesn't flow right. On the other hand, I like most of the Japanese voices, except Gordon's. He just doesn't fit the "over the top superhero" voice category.
Despite the ability to switch between Japanese and English voices in the game, it remains a mystery why the combat voices are still English. Actually, to clarify that a bit, most of them are in English, but some of them remain in Japanese. The Ninja, and Brawler stay true to their roots, but for some awful reason, the Thief is in English, and if there's one on the map, as soon as I hear them, they're dead.
I realize that the feel of the game is tongue-in-cheek and not really serious, but there should NEVER, EVER be any character in a game that utters, "SHAZAM!", and "Who da man?!" I certainly hope Atlus didn't pay the person who wrote that in, and the person who did the voice set any money, because all they did was detract from an otherwise brilliant game. I think this all stems from one of the other big flaws in the game...which I'll get to in the Flaws section.
The Flaws Section
To keep the continuity flowing, I'll mention the bad localization/proofreading in the lead paragraph here, although it isn't my biggest gripe with the game. There are a whopping 3 QA testers listed for this game. I don't know if Atlus is just being bastardly and only allowing 3 to be in the credits list, but since there are multiple entries for other people, they're either being bastards on a colossal scale, or they were severely undermanned.
If they were in fact, severely undermanned, then the blame for this lies squarely on the genius who figured that they could thoroughly test a strategy-RPG this large with just 3 people. When we did it at Squaresoft, I think there was 10 of us around at that time, and I still don't think that was enough with our schedule.
In any case, there are some fairly obvious errors with the text in the game. Most of it just comes off as bland...like they just stopped caring after a certain point. For example, the "Succubus" monster has a set of 4 skills. They all say something like, "This is a very sexy attack." The words vary to some extent, subbing out "very" with "extremely" and the like, but there's a problem with that...one of the attacks is called Sexy Healing...and it heals. While it may still be construed as sexy, it certainly isn't an attack. Now, I don't know what happened at Atlus, but what it feels like to me is someone just went Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V 4 times and swapped out one word, because they saw the kanji character for "technique" there, and assumed they were all attacks.
In an ideal situation, this person would have been playing the game side by side with the text on-screen, and known exactly what it linked to. In a less than ideal situation, QA would catch this error. In actuality...both of those didn't happen and you'll end up reading descriptions like, "An unsurmountable attack" and dialogue like, "Don't get beat by these group of enemies."
It's probably because of this that the Prinnies end up saying "Dooooood" a whole freaking lot. Apparently they felt the need to translate the "ne?" that most of the ultra-cutesy types in Japan like to tack onto the end of every interrogative sentence. It's generally redundant, but "doooooood" is probably one of the last things I would end up translating it as. Especially since they yell it in combat. It's why I stopped using them. They just get to be hideously annoying. It ends up feeling to me like a lot of translation got done in the, "Yeah, it kinda works, so we'll go with it." style, rather than trying to find an elegant and polished way of saying things that would have made this game an all-around classic instead of a great game with a translation problem.
Anyway, that's probably just a big pet peeve that only I notice, so on to the biggest flaw with Disgaea. This one is Nippon Ichi's fault. The problem is that there's no way to tilt the camera up and down 45 degrees. There are many spots in Item World that would greatly benefit from you being to look into gaps, etc. But there isn't any way to do that, and it's frustrating as all hell. You spend all this time trying to rotate the camera to find out if there's a guy next to you that you want to attack, or a Geo Stone or something...and you can't tell for sure. Please keep this in mind Nippon Ichi, and put it into any sequels.
Next on my list of complaints are two other combat flaws. Why can't I set the final facing direction of my character as they end their turn? I walk, and if I had to turn, I'm stuck in whatever direction I was facing. Being attacked from behind increases damage and decreases Def, lining up two characters back to back drops their chance of a successful combo, so why can't I set direction? Every other strategy RPGs either let's you, or doesn't increase damage from behind. If you can, they certainly don't tell you anywhere easy to find, or even in the Tutorial...but it doesn't mean it's not in the game...anyway, that ticks me off too. Also, since Throwing is such an important startegic addition to the game (they have a Tutorial chapter for it.) why can't I view the character's Throw stat anywhere? Gordon can throw 6 spaces, and Etna 5...but the only way I can discover this is by trying to actually throw stuff, and then finding out my character's got a rubber arm.
The last thing is the utter and complete lack of any clipping whatsoever in the game. The worst is when you use a Blade user's "Hurricane Slash". The skill has them rotate around an enemy to create a wind vortex before slashing them. The attacking character will go through mountains, other characters, the floor...whatever. It looks utterly ridiculous. Seriously, Nippon Ichi...I would think someone would have noticed this.
A lot of people will probably think I excessively nitpicked...and you know what...you're right. But the fact that I'm nitpicking on what made this a lesser game, as opposed to an absolutely perfect one should let you know how good this is. It's not like Venus and Braves where my main complaint is "How exactly is this strategic, tactical, or fun?" When I have time and space to nitpick...you've made your game right...just not perfect. :)
Replay
Normally, I won't make an entire paragraph just for this, but in this case, Disgaea deserves it. You can argue that there's an inifinite level of replay since you're going to get an inifnite number of items to enter. However, that's not my idea of replay.
However, for the Uber-Munchkins who walk among us who are obsessed with making the most powerful character ever, Nippon Ichi put in some special goodies for you. The True Final Boss of the game weighs in at level 6000, and I've heard will probably dish out close to a million HP worth of damage in a single attack. So enjoy. You can easily beat the main game at level 120 or so with one character (you are going to have to do some outside the main story arc levelling...it's a requirement of the game.) but you won't be anywhere near where you need to be to finish it completely.
All tolled, I logged 66 hours on the game, eventually wrapping it up at 6:15am on a Sunday...a true sign of a game's excellence. If I'm watching credits roll and turn around to see the sun rise...you've done your job well. Good job Nippon Ichi, thanks for the translation and production, Atlus.
Overall
I'd like to say I recommend this game to anyone. But I can't. If you're under 13, don't be playing this...you won't get half the jokes. If you're a parent and your kid's under 13 and he wants this game...don't get it for him. He won't get half the jokes...because they're sexually oriented. And while there's isn't any nudity in the game, or anything like that, there are enough low-brow references that you probably don't want your kid messing with it.
Aside from that...is it better than Tactics? No. It isn't. Sorry. Tactics has a much better story the entire way through the game. Disgaea's story is lighthearted and funny...that's not why it's not as good...it's because Tactics' storyline is good to great the entire time...like a 9-9.5 from everyone...including the Russian judge. While Disgaea scores 10s in some areas, Episode 6 and 9, for example, it scores low 5s in others...like the ending, and anytime Flonne's trying to convince Laharl to feel love.
Also, the class structure for Tactics is done better in my opinion, with Tactics keeping abilities limited to certain jobs, while Disgaea lets you have them all and level new ones depending on what weapon you're using, so unlocking classes doesn't feel quite so special...they're just kind of...different sprites to have. Except if you're using a Magic User...since Disgaea doesn't give you points exp for using your skills, they take forever to level with.
Not beating Tactics isn't a knock, though...no game has, yet. This does win an Editor's Choice from me, and is the best title I've played so far this year. Only time will tell if it's knocked out of place by Tactics Advance, Dynasty Tactics 2, or Onimusha Tactics. That's the great thing about this year, though...there's competition.
So once again, kudos, Nippon Ichi...you've done well. Thanks Atlus, you brought over a great game...and we paid you for it...but hire some better translators and/or QA.
